App Academy

Came in with expectations that the next 3-4 months would be challenging and overwhelming, and indeed it was. One thing I did not expect was the feeling of accomplishment along with joy when developing projects from ground up. The type of projects I thought were impossible seemed doable even after months of learning. A valuable takeaway when completing this program is to be able to self sustain and continue to learn more about what programming has to offer. And of course to get a job that you love to do.

I was going to write a whole review but I think it would be way too long so I'll do a TL;DR and supply my email if you have any questions about my time at App Academy and Flatiron School.

A little background, I was a psych and business major who wrote his first line of code 8 months before attending a/A. I was at app academy (a/A) starting in November '17 for 5 weeks before being released due to 'not passing' two assessments. The reason I am writing this review is to warn others like me and to hope they don't make the same mistake. a/A isn't a bad school. It's just not for everyone. Full disclosure, I am now attending Flatiron School and am 9 weeks in so I will be comparing the two because I wish someone told me what I am about to tell you.

I'm sure you've read it a million times, a/A is rigorous, difficult, and very STRESSFUL. And that can't be said enough. Even when I was released, an instructor told me that a/A is the most stressful bootcamp. Anyway, I am not afraid of challenges and that alone would never disregard a school, however, that along with a subpar curriculum, unnecessary attendance takes (you have to log your attendance three times a day, when you arrive, after lunch and after a 15 minute break), and LOADS of readings and homework every night makes learning and retaining information very hard. 100 hours a week is the time you will be grinding if you attend a/A.

My assessment story...

The first assessment that I failed was my fault because since a/A has class on Thanksgiving, I didn't get to see my family so I ended up meeting my brother in the city that weekend, he was here from Virginia. The night ended later than I thought and messed up my weekend studying and ended up doing poorly on the test. The second test I failed, I missed by ONE SPEC. There were 76 specs and I got an 83.33%, and 85% was passing. So after the second fail, you get to retake THE SAME DAY. The test was two hours, I was tired, but now I have to take another 2-hour test. You might be thinking I should be good because I only missed one spec so I should pass the second. Well, when the retake in 5X more difficult than the first one and you're exhausted from just taking a 2-hour test then good luck. I was in that room doing the retake with two others. One of them stopped typing after a half hour because she had no idea what was going on, and the other left with a half hour left. No one was close to passing the second exam and we were all booted along with the other 8 ppl that were booted before us. That is app academy for you. 

I would say the biggest difference in a/A and Flatiron is that Flatiron not only teaches you how to code but to love it and know it. While App Academy teaches you how to memorize in order to pass ridiculous assessments. 

App Academy has a take no prisoners feel and Flatiron has an all things have a soul feel. In other words, Flatiron cares about you, they know how to teach you how to code and build great things, and they get you to love code. Flatiron's platform is the best platform for learning code bar none and if you are falling behind the TAs are more than happy to take you one on one to make sure you understand.

App Academy thinks beating you over the head with the info via readings and lectures will get you to learn.You have to teach yourself at a/A. Yea the instructors give you the information, but the course moves so fast that if you don't understand something you have no time to try to understand it, so you are forced to memorize code in order to pass assessments. 

You can email me at EsbeeScribe@yahoo.com if you have any particular questions regarding my time at either App Academy or Flatiron School. 

I just finished the main portion of AppAcademy's full-time bootcamp in NYC, i.e. week 9 out of the full 12 weeks. (Note, for some reason Yelp tagged this as being for SF, but this is a review of the NYC campus.)  I came into the program with about a year of experience tinkering with Ruby, Javascript, and Python, and some background in logic, and a long history of playing around with computers, but no academic CS background.   My academic background is in the humanities (philosophy and theology) and I spent the first six years after college in grad school, then teaching, then working at a small magazine. 

The course is extremely intense. (I say this as someone who graduated in the top 10% of my class at Yale.) About 25% of my cohort was asked to leave because they couldn't keep up with the pace. That said, the instructors do a good job of helping you through each day, and the structure of the course itself, from one day to the next, is very thoroughly regimented. If you do the course, I recommend surrendering to the routine as much as possible.  There is always more work to do--you will almost never finish a day's projects. The name of the game is to struggle for 14+ hours, get some sleep, and then struggle again the next day. You will work on weekends, you will not have a day off before week ten (and if you think you do, you're probably making a mistake). If you can keep up, you will find that the rate of your learning is really high.

A typical day goes as follows: you arrive at the office by ~8:45am in advance of the morning checkin and go to your assigned seat for the day, with your partner for the day. 9 - 9:30am is spent doing a CSS exercise. 9:30 to about noon is spent in lecture (lectures have built-in Q&A time, and a five minute break in the middle). Lectures cover everything from O(n) and implementing backend Auth to meta-programming in Ruby and state structure design in Redux.  Lectures are generally reinforcement of the essential concepts from the previous night's readings and homework.  This means they tend to be more basic, and more Q&A oriented than the readings--as a result they can feel boring if you understood the readings right away, but the reinforcement is essential.  At 12:30 there's a lunch break, which continues until 1:45pm. Some people work on homework during lunch, but the instructors encourage students to take the time to have a break.  At 1:45 there's another checkin, after which you resume work with your partner, starting the day's projects.  There are usually two or three projects, the first one deals with implementing the concepts in the day's lecture, and then the subsequent projects tend to be more advanced extensions of the same material. You will rarely get through the second project of the day.  Many days you won't even finish the first.  At 6pm an instructor dismisses the class and makes any announcements or reminders.  After 6pm about 1/4 of the cohort will stay behind to complete their homework at the office.  Most people go home to do the homework, which is usually ~3 hours, depending on the number of recorded lecture segments and readings.  After finishing the homework, students are expected to review the solutions to the day's projects, and read through the next day's project instructions in advance.

That's life for the first 7 weeks of the course.  Assessments are usually on Mondays or Wednesdays.  They're terrifying, very difficult to prepare for, and intense, but if you do what the instructors tell you to do to study, and use the provided resources, the test itself should go fine.  In the 8th week the typical lecture/project/homework schedule goes away and students spend about 10 days doing individual full-stake projects.  This building a production-ready clone of a major web application (facebook, airbnb, etc.) from scratch, on your own.  Project presentations happen at the end of week 9, after which the jobsearch curriculum begins.  This is three weeks of lecture, independent projects, application/interview prep, etc. (That's where I'm at right now).  

If I remember, I'll come back and update this review once some time passes so I can assess the program in light of its key promise: to help you get an engineering job. As things stand, it could hardly have been better, except in minor ways here and there (a few unclear assignments, a few weak lectures), but as a learning experience it's up in the top experiences of my life.  Totally practical, radically empowering.  I learned a lot.  And continue to learn about as much in the past two months as I think I could have.

I came into the program, like many others, as a career switcher.  I had taken two intro level programming courses in undergrad before attending.  The hours are rough - be prepared to spend at minimum 30 hours a week on top of the course completing homeworks, readings, and completing your projects.  However, the instructors are more than helpful and there's nothing more motivating than surrounding yourself with some of the smartest people around.  The course is very well laid out and  each topic leads into the next which helps with absorbing the material.  It's common to have to put your social life on hold while attending this course but the payout is definitely worth it! 

App Academy is an extremely intense, though not entirely too difficult, course. If you're someone with no programming experience (like me), then it means making sure that learning software development becomes your #1, #2, and #3 priority. The pace of the material is set up such that you'll always have something new to learn, and there are always additional resources provided for your learning. I'd recommend a/A to people who are great at being self-motivated and can handle a fast-paced learning environment. If not, there are plenty of great programs in the city to choose from that are less strenuous.

App Academy opened a door to a career in software development that I didn't even know existed (I had thought six-figure software engineering positions only came through traditional paths, such as four-year CS degrees, etc.).

But, after leaving a career in finance, I'm now earning almost double what I was previously (plus I'm in a junior/entry-level role, so that should increase with time/experience), I'm doing something that I love, and I get to work in a relaxed environment (busy, for sure, but it's fun, without any of the stilted corporate rules, like a 50's-era dress code, etc., that I left behind in finance). I have App Academy to thank for this, hence the 5 stars.

So I'm happy to report that it's all pretty much as advertised. It's a rigorous 3 month course that will consume your entire life at the time, but you'll learn a ton, make great friends, and be able to land a fun and lucrative position (eventually) to kickstart your new career in software engineering.

That said, something that wasn't fully emphasized to me upfront is that the job search can become a long, drawn out, exhausting process that I found much harder and less rewarding (at least in the short term) than the 3 months of intense coding. I believe the "average" job search time estimated when I first applied was "3 months", which was then later verbally estimated at "4 to 5 months", and ultimately ended up being 10 months, in my case.

Don't get me wrong; we had one student from our cohort who had a job within 2 weeks of graduating and a healthy number of others had new jobs within the first few months, but many others had job searches much longer than that. Some landed jobs at Google/YouTube, Yelp, Dropbox, etc., while others at smaller startups, and many took on temporary contract work or internships; there's not a single path here, so there's diversity in the success stories and App Academy is pretty flexible in supporting you however you get there.

In other words, I'd keep that in mind and plan accordingly; you might get a job right away, but more likely it will take months, and could very well take almost a year to get an offer, in which case you need to be mentally/financially prepared for that going in. There's a lot of rejection involved when trying to get your foot in the door and all of these companies receive hundreds, if not thousands, of applications. If you're skilled at networking, you'll likely fare much better.

You may have heard how much of a shortage there is for software engineers in the industry right now, but if you check out the job boards (or just attempt the job search), you'll soon find that the shortage is actually for experienced mid-to-senior level engineers, as there is an abundance of junior engineers coming from colleges, self-taught individuals, or one of the many bootcamps, which each churn out about 70 - 80 new junior engineers every three months, with largely the same technical background.

In any case, even though it took me a grueling 10 month job search to finally fulfill the dream, I'd definitely do it again, love what App Academy's given me, and am really excited to grow in my new career.

I can't recommend App Academy enough; just remember that it actually gets harder after the initial 3 month coding program and that you may not feel relieved or at rest until you ultimately accept an offer.

Thanks, a/A!

While trying to switch careers and knowing that the tech industry is where I wanted to be, I did a lot of research into what the best process was to get started. I didn't have a CS degree, and I knew nothing about coding. After speaking with a couple of tech recruiters in the industry, I was told that App Academy was one of the only bootcamps they take seriously enough to hire straight out of with no previous experience. So speaking as someone who knew nothing coming into App Academy, I feel it's important to stress that they are not kidding when they say it's intense. You will spend on average 100 hours a week trying to learn new technologies at such an intense rate that you'll constantly feel a step behind. I personally loved my experience and am so glad I did it because I learned so many new things, am very proud of what I've accomplished, and truly feel as if I've learned the technologies enough to reproduce results at my next job, but it's not for everyone. I highly recommend it for anyone serious about switching careers and would tell you to not to count yourself out if you don't know a thing about coding coming into it, but keep in mind that if you can't handle 100 hour weeks or giving up your weekends and social life to learn how to code, this bootcamp is not for you. It will become your life for three months, but if you can get through it and want a change in your life that's both financially beneficial and intellectually stimulating, you should definitely apply! Again, I loved my time here and would do it again given the chance, but I feel like it's important to know up front what you're getting yourself into.

App Academy has been a great learning experience.  The staff is extremely knowledgeable and the curriculum is tailored towards YOUR success.  Having no prior experience, I walked into class thinking I had bit off more than I could chew.  However, going through the daily pair programming sessions I learned more than I thought was possible in the short amount of time.   It's stressful, and it's certainly hard, but it works.  If you really want to dive into a career in software development, App Academy may be the right place for you.  But be prepared to put in the time and effort required to succeed.

App academy was an awesome experience. You'll learn something new everyday and you'll be surrounded by driven and focused peers. The course is super fast paced and difficult (even compared to other bootcamps) so you'll find that on top of technical skills you'll also build on your time management and communication skills as well. 
Indeed the course can be stressful at times but if you go into it with a positive attitude and an appetite for learning you'll succeed!

It was amazing full stack coding experience with Ruby, JS, SQL and CSS. You will learn a lot  in a very short period of time. You would be expected to work 90 hours a week!
If 90 hours a week is to much for you don't even think about a/A.  The huge curriculum combined with the fast pace. For me  the best part was algorithms.
AppAcademy will challenge you with the speed and depth of learning. You would be expected to build a 100% full  stack website by the end of the program, even if you don't know anything right now. Be ready, this is stressful. There are  6 different assessments during curriculum. If you miss two you will be dismissed.  Please be aware that this an environment where, once you fall behind, there is no catching up. I believe this was the most challenging education in my life.